EL PAÍS offers the América Futura section openly for its daily and global information contribution on sustainable development. If you want to support our journalism, subscribe here.
Edras Suazo is one of the thousands of young Hondurans who have been victims of the flirtation of the gangs, urban organized crime structures that take advantage of poverty and fractured homes to recruit minors into their ranks, in exchange for a false illusion of love and protection that the children never received from their families or the authorities. With the exception of the protagonist, all the names in this story have been modified to protect Edras Suazo, who offers his first-person testimony, and the hundreds of members of the organization with which he works, Youth Against Violencea youth organization that helps young people look for alternatives for their future in a country without fear:
Although all stories are unique, I know that mine is similar to that of thousands of young people in Honduras. My name is Edras Suazo, and I was about to become a gang member. To explain it, I must summarize my life from the beginning. I was born 27 years ago in Comayagua, a city in the center of the country, which, a few meters from the colonial buildings for tourists, hides the reality of ordinary people.
You just have to cross a bridge from the center to be closer to the city that I was in. A Comayagua with dirt floors, wooden houses and aluminum roofs, in which I grew up between different neighborhoods and rental houses, with my mother and two of my four brothers. We were all children of different fathers. I, I, never knew mine.
His absence and the lack of love in my house made me an easy target for the most important gangs in Honduras. Those, represented with two numbers, that have eyes and dominion everywhere. “The boys” offered me the protection and affection I needed, while my mother hit me at the slightest provocation. I remember she never hugged me as a child. I received my first hug from a gang member.
Pablo told me that I was the son he always wanted, and in my fantasies, I turned him into the father I longed to have. He was one of the leaders of the gang that controlled my colony. His tattoos, his weapons, and the power he exercised over others gave me a morbid feeling that made me want to imitate him. Everyone obeyed him, while they didn't even respect me at home.
One of my brothers mistreated me and the owner of the house would rip up the tiles on us if we were late with our rent payments. A very different reality from that of the colony's boss. At 12 years old, he told myself that I wanted to be like him. He was willing to prove my loyalty to Pablo in exchange for the family love he offered me.
He examined my character by measuring my capacity to do harm. He took me up a hill and made me kill a puppy. I remember he had to help me pull the trigger. I also remember the explosion of that little white dog's head. At that moment, I stopped liking those animals, and Pablo and I realized that he was no good to be a murderer.
Now I know that test had nothing to do with affection. It was a mere occupational exam, which responded to a modus operandi. The gangs tested your abilities to classify you. Afterwards, they offered you the illusion of belonging to something and having people by your side. Both things were paid for in a world of drugs, which could lead to jail or a grave, as later happened to him.
After the challenge of killing, no more orders like that came. I only got used to helping with simple things since I was little. Actions that I thought were risk-free like running errands or putting things away without asking questions.
I went to the Comayagua penitentiary with my school backpack loaded with marijuana, cocaine and rocks. crack camouflaged among food containers for prisoners. He didn't question anything. My childhood obedience was an asset that the gang members earned with food, affection, and tips. This is how things work in many areas of Honduras. That way, children who no one sees survive.
With what he earned, he helped around the house. I felt proud every time I brought 100 lempiras (4 dollars) to my mother to eat. Those were the moments when I could relate to her. If she asked me where she got the money from, she would make up anything. I pretended to tell the truth and she pretended to believe it.
This is how the years passed, between small assignments to the gangs, shortages at home and arguments with one of my brothers. He would take me out of my bed and I would have to sleep on the floor, while my mother ignored everything. That filled me with rage. A fury that I felt along with the resignation of not having a father, two things that made me take refuge in alcohol and my two best friends.
They ended up fighting because they joined different gangs and we only met once secretly to say goodbye to our friendship. Meanwhile, the boys from the colony kept winking at me to take the definitive step of joining their cause. Although the idea was tempting, he was still undecided. He knew that if he entered the gang seriously, he would never be able to get out of it. At least, I'm not alive.
However, the idea began to resonate more in my head when the gang members offered to prove their loyalty by executing those who had hurt me. It was tempting to think of the end of those who had slighted me. Even in that of the brother who never loved me.
It wasn't difficult to get rid of my family because there wasn't any. We never celebrate Christmas or birthdays. Living together alone seemed like an accident dictated by blood. He associated maternal love with indifference, brotherhood with violence, and fatherhood with fantasy. As it was, the promise of a family tempted me to become a gang member until I was 16 years old.
I was finally going to move from idea to action. He had already talked to one of the bosses about the possibility of me joining the gang. They liked my character and the charisma I had, and they even offered to pay for my university degree. That is something common in gangs. They have their people for everything, including professionals who work behind the scenes to keep crime enterprises running smoothly.
That offer tempted me, especially because the girlfriend I had at the time had become pregnant and I had no way of supporting my future child. Joining the gang, at that time, seemed like a logical decision.
The turn
When I was ready to sentence my fate to the gang, a meeting saved my life. It was a talk at the institute that I attended out of curiosity and in which for the first time I saw the option of doing something different with myself.
There they told us about Jóvenes Contra la Violencia Honduras (JCVH), an organization of volunteers to do activities with people our age and talk about what worried us. It was the first space where I felt like I could belong to something outside of the noise of gangs or dysfunctional families, along with other kids like me. A refuge only from us and for us.
I threw myself in as a volunteer and gave my refusal to the colony's gang leader. After all, I had told him that he would think about it, and in the name of his appreciation for me, he had no problem with him pushing me aside. I got small temporary jobs to help support my son and before he knew it, I went from being a potential gang member to trying to make sure that wasn't an option for anyone else.
I joined all JCVH activities. We made murals with positive messages in the same places where someone had been murdered, we talked with families in the colonies, and we kept our minds busy with dreams.
Within a couple of years, I was already coordinating a good number of volunteers and my ability to talk to them, influence them and share what we did made me passionate about communication. For more than three years, I have been the communications director of JCVH, although I am still in the process of completing my degree. I never imagined that I would go to university, but I found a family that trusted me and with whom I could glimpse a purpose.
Throughout ten years of work, I feel that hope for young people grows from small changes. We already have 600 volunteers in 32 communities in Honduras, young people who oppose violence, but who also dialogue with it to transform things. We talked to the gang leaders so they would let us enter the neighborhoods. There, we watch movies in the middle of the street with the teenagers and paint where bullets once flew.
We know that many group leaders allow us to enter their colonies with the silent hope that other young people, or even their children, will not be part of those structures. The problem is not just with them. The young people of Honduras are victims of an entire system that forgets them and leaves them without options. In the end, gangs are an option because they offer apparent spaces of protection that the family or the State do not provide.
At JCVH we put pressure on decision makers to do something. Last year, we collaborated with several organizations to promote and give visibility to the displacement law in Honduras, together with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. The standard has already been approved by the Government and came into force this year. It will be a mechanism to help those fleeing their homes d
ue to the violence that consumes the country. The same one that took away two inseparable friends from me, and that has left many whom I loved in a coffin.
Wounds that JCVH has helped me reconcile. With the boys I understood that what I experienced only responded to an endless spiral of violence that no one knew how to handle, neither in the neighborhood nor in my house. For my mother, beatings and insults were a way to distract us from our shortcomings. The abuse was a consequence of ignorance of other ways to solve problems. Understanding that has healed our relationship, and from now on I want to share with my mother all the achievements that come.
Maybe I won't become the most respected in my neighborhood, but I have already become someone I respect. I try to be a better father than the one I didn't have and, little by little, heal what I experienced as a child. I know that there are wounds that may not be healed, but I am comforted by the support of the family that I chose. It feels good to know that in Honduras I am part of the solutions and not the problems. And although every day I remember that my first hug was from a gang member, I fight so that other young people do not tell the same story.
#gangs #recruit #children #disguise #affection #received #hug #gang #member
